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Chris Jones’ blog on the impact of austerity in Greece

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Chris introduces his blog to you here:

These are extraordinary times. Not just here in Greece but in many places from Bradford to Cairo, New York to Damascus and beyond. These are times of great despair for many who are being crushed by a brutalising capitalism intent on rolling back every gain made by working people over the past 100 years. They are also times of great hope as new solidarities are being forged in resistance and survival . In this blog my intent – with the help of close comrades – is to record and give witness to these events as they roll out on the island of Samos, Greece, where I now live. Based on observations and discussions with the people of the island my hope is to convey something of the impact of these extraordinary times on daily lives and well-being and how they are influencing significant shifts in understanding, living, social relationships and politics more generally. I hope that readers of the blog will feel free to use the material in whatever way they want . There is no need to ask for permission. It is yours to use! Any feedback would be much appreciated. Even a single word would suffice as it would be encouraging for me to know that it is not all disappearing into some dark hole. More than ever before we need to fight and fight and struggle doing whatever we can and wherever we stand. We are many. They are few.


Please visit Chris’ blog here.

DPAC solidarity appeal and actions

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Wednesday 18th April 2012 (London) – Action around benefit cuts, care funding and Loss of Remploy jobs: meet at 13:30 Leicester Square McDonalds.

Thursday 19th April 2012 (London) – Public meeting – Fight the Remploy Closures: 7.30pm, ULU, Malet Street, London WC1E 7H . Speakers include: John McDonnell MP & Chair Right to Work campaign, Gail Cartmail, Unite Assistant General Secretary, Les Woodward, GMB National Convenor of Remploy; Rob Murthwaite, Disabled People Against the Cuts.

Friday 20th April 2012 (Sheffield) – National Demonstration – Lobby the DWP in Sheffield: Campaign to save Remploy factories
Assemble 12.30 for a 1pm start outside the Department of Work and Pensions office in Sheffield (Steel City House) at the junction of West Street, Church Street and Tripit Lane.

Statement from DPAC to SWAN:

On April 18th DPAC supported by UKUNCUT and others will be taking action in London once more to highlight the multiple atrocities and human rights abuses being perpetrated against disabled people by the unelected Condem Government. Taken together, the impact of these attacks against disabled people will destroy any possibility of independent living and move disability rights back 30 years or more. Once again disabled people will become trapped in their homes and unable to take an active part in activities that non-disabled people take for granted. They will slowly but surely ‘disappear’ from society.

DPAC will be joined in this protest by Remploy workers from around the country who are also being thrown onto the scrapheap by the Condems who are justifying closing 36 out of the 54 Remploy factories as being advised by the Sayce Review. The remaining factories will be privatised and sold off to the highest bidder. The factories earmarked for closure are being called unprofitable, however, bosses at the factories received £180 million in bonuses last year.

While DPAC obviously believe in the full inclusion of disabled people in society, we think the right place to start is to demand a legal right for disabled children to attend mainstream schools rather than to start by throwing adults who have worked in Remploy factories for many years onto the ever increasing dole queue. The last round of Remploy redundancies under the Labour government left over 90% of those made unemployed without any jobs or hope for their futures.’

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Please send solidarity money to enable disabled activists to get to the London demo on Wednesday 18th April here.

Please also sign the petition against the closure of the Remploy Factories here.

Support Amanpreet Kaur! A young asylum seeking woman

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SWAN collected a donation in their support on the day, but just as importantly we gave all conference delegates of the conference a copy of the letter to Teresa May which you can download at the bottom of this article. The letter argues for Amanpreet Kaur’s right to remain in the UK.

Please support this campaign and publicise it as widely as possible among your networks, colleagues and friends – we need as many people as possible writing to Teresa May in her defence. 

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More on Amanpreet’s situation (taken from Global Women’s Strike website and other sources):

Amanpreet Kaur is a young Lesbian woman from the Sikh community in Punjab, India. After coming out she was subjected to torture, death threats and attempted rape by her father. She and her partner fled to the UK to seek asylum, in fear for there lives and hopefully to join a society where being a lesbian is not a crime.

Unfortunately bad legal advice and severe trauma and a fear of speaking out about their sexuality led to Ms Kaur and her partner being detained by UK immigration and held in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Center.

Here they were subjected to lack of health care, lack of food, abuse (physical, psychological and sexual), rape…. Ms Kaur cut her wrists and wrote a goodbye message to her partner, in blood, on the cell walls.

Ms Kaur was released from the detention center on 8th March but both she and her partner face deportation to India. Where they will suffer abuse, “corrective” rape and honour killing, especially if they do not comply to their arranged marriages. They will never see one another again and Ms Kaur will not receive the mental health support she needs.

Please, download, print, sign and send the letter I’ve attached to Teresa May. Insta-click contact MP internet plugs don’t have the same affect as 1000s of letters heaped on a desk! You can also copy and paste the letter and email it if you’d rather (email address is on the letter).

Please look for more updates about Amanpreet Kaur and Ms D at the Global Women’s Strike website here.

You can also write/phone Yarl’s Wood protesting the homophobic, racist discriminatory treatment by staff. These are just two examples of many: an officer told Ms Kaur: “Don’t think pretending you’re homosexual or going on hunger strike will help you, they will not release you. If they cannot send you alive then they will send your dead body back to India”.  On another occasion when Ms Kaur was banging her head against a wall in desperation, an officer, instead of helping her, sexually assaulted her and an officer standing nearby laughed.  When Ms D tried to report what had happened to the Yarl’s Wood Manager and the psychiatrist, they claimed Ms Kaur had been hallucinating!

UKBA centre manager Fiona Quaynor via: Christopher.harlow2@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
Tel: 01234 821 300

SERCO centre manager: James Wilkinson james.wilkinson@serco.co.u
Tel: 01234 821 1000

Please send copies of your letters to Queer Strike queerstrike@queerstrike.net and Ms Kaur at friendsofamanpreetandd@gmail.com

SWAN Conf 2012 – Friday 30th March

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– Sheffield case study: 16+ years life expectancy difference between richest and poorest areas

– House prices differentiation took off  in mid-90’s impacts for inheritance and perpetuating inequality.

– Last week’s budget tax cuts gave every person earning over £1m annually over £40k extra

– Sheffield case study: 4360 kids lose up to £1.5m from April 2012

– In more equitable countries the felt need to consume is less so less is wasted and thrown away.

– In some affluent countries the top 1% have never has less than they have had today. And the trains still run on time.

– You could create 15m new jobs, from the amount the rich have increased their wealth since the 1970’s.

– Population is leveling off at aroubd 9bn after 2050, will bring systemic change. Majority of world’s children now literate: you can’t fool them all any more!

AUDIENCE

– By veiling cuts, personalisation means people cannot afford to go to previous day centre let alone have more choice

– need to hold Unison leaders to account over pensions let down in fortcoming elections

– social workers and others being squeezed increasingly identifying with people they work with

– idea of Scotland under devolution being land of milk & honey simplistic – life expectancy in Glasgow as low as 54

– social workers and others need to denounce and take back money from the likes of Council CEO’s with ‘ferrari attitudes’

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WHAT HAPPENED TO ANTI-RACIST SOCIAL WORK

We received an urgent address and appeal by two lesbian asylum seeker Indian women –who have been persecuted, beaten and raped by Detention Centre officials. SWAN took a vote and agreed to make this a campaign priority.

Raped and stabbed in UK for being homosexual. Police supported those people who raped stabbed them.

Detained in detention centre. In terms of treatment they were told by officers they take benefits and opportunities – or to go back to own countries.

When one of the women was not eating or drinking: they said it was a faked behaviour – after being sexually assaulted by detention centre officers.

Women appealed for support – if not successful in asylum claim, they will die – honour killing by own families.

SWAN ACTIONS AGREED:

1. Sign letter to Teresa May in Conference Pack – will upload later or check twitter @SWANsocialwork to find picture of letter.

2. Sign petition in favour of granting asylum.

3. Collection for women

POINTS MADE BY CHARLOTTE WILLIAMS (KEELE UNIVERSITY), RHETTA MORAN (RAPAR) AND WEYMAN BENNETT (UNITE AGAINST FASCISM)

*Apologies for poor coverage, had technical problems during this session*

– Identified March 2002 as turning point in public consciousness against asylum seeks – the Star and News of the World talked about Asylum Seekers as ‘this scum’ at same time as Sangatte.

– In 2003, the government sent letters to Iraqi asylum seekers to return at same time as loading planes to bomb Iraq, while no airport was open

– Social workers have a voice inside their head – a dialogue  affected by what is happening in environment and ideological context. People seeking asylum are key resources to making change in right direction – link with them and help release their own resources.  Don’t underestimate potential power you have – if you are prepared to engage with person – concentrate on what they’ve got in them.

– Social workers are on front line of fighting fascism as it emerges in society.

– Social workers need to be confident to speak out against racism – to put up signs saying we do not accept racism and fascism in this office.

– There is a fiction of Islamophobia existing alone. A recent increase to 1200 Islamophobic attacks was accompanied by other forms racism returning  – the media reactions to the Dale Farm evictions for instance.

– On 14th and 22nd April there are UAF days of action against EDL – social workers need to be out on the streets speaking out against racism/fascism.

– Social workers, social care workers: urgent need to bring together people attacked by far right to defeat them.

– Importance of sharing stories of what’s happening within asylum system.  Privatisation of asylum support. Organisations such as G4S are assisting asylum seekers at the same time as deporting asylum seekers, and abuse and worse occurs in the detention centres they run.

– Social workers have choice to fight back against process of privatisation or slip into social work as surveillance and control of asylum seekers and general population.

Progressive Social Work Manifesto, Hong Kong

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For a decade, social welfare in Hong Kong has been severely challenged. The government’s neoliberal approach to welfare has led to adopt residualist welfare system, thereby undermining social welfare as a powerful tool for securing human rights and justice. Without long-term planning, welfare spending has been steadily decreasing. The so-called flexible planning and funding mechanism has rendered social welfare to a sporadic, ad hoc services. As a result, there is a widening rich-poor gap, intensifying social stratification, and worsening of quality of life for the grassroots. Despite continuous demands from the public and the social welfare sector for the government to resume long-term planning for social welfare, the Labour Welfare Bureau (LWB) has shunned its responsibility by delegating the task to the Social Welfare Advisory Committee, which has no de facto authority. As the important role of Hong Kong’s social welfare system is undermined, autonomy of social services, the core values of promoting social justice in social have also been challenged to an unprecedented degree.

Today, Hong Kong has the widest rich-poor gap in all of Asia, with a Gini coefficient at 0.533, championing even Europe and the US. However, public expenditure on social welfare accounts for only 17% of total government expenditure (about 400 million). 75% of that is used in financial aid such as social security schemes, and only 25% is spent on other social services.

Hiding behind austerity as an excuse, the government has capped social welfare spending and created divisions among difference needs of grassroots. In numerous policy addresses and financial budgets, as well as the recent consultative document on long-term planning for social welfare, the government has not only ignored the problem of wealth disparity, but reaffirmed its policies of low taxation and rejection of using welfare as a tool for redistribution of resources. Even worse is the fact that citizens have begun to shoulder the burden of welfare spending with the implementation of different classes of social services: by putting emphasis on the principle of users pay, social investment, business donations and other financing strategies, the government has shifted the burden onto the society.
Social services providers have been expected to assist in creating the illusion of ‘harmony’, rendering social workers no more than technocrats used to establish control over the society. Exploiting the so-called ‘professional’ skills of social work, the government has strengthened the role of monitory and social control of social work, while weakening its importance in promoting human rights and securing social justice.

Ten major problems in Hong Kong’s social welfare

1. Biding by the neoliberal principle of ‘big government, small market’ and maintaining a residual welfare system while reducing the only existing safety net – the Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA)
2. Reducing profit tax, import tax on wine, abolishing inheritance tax, strengthening wealth accumulation and intensifying wealth disparity
3. Implementing a population policy that discriminates against new immigrants and exploit their right to welfare
4. Political oppression of social services and the autonomy of social workers
5. Using flexibility as an excuse, the government avoids responsibility for a flawed planning system and funding mechanism
6. Undermining social welfare with Lump Sum Grants (LSG)
7. Competitive bidding of social service and commodification of welfare
8. Adopting the principles of user pays and ability-to-pay, thereby creating substandard social services, violating the equality of the right to welfare
9. Using ‘Government- business sector-public cooperation’ as an excuse, the government has introduced market principles into the welfare sector, thereby lessening the government’s responsibility in this area
10. Avoiding welfare planning by delegating the responsibility to a powerless consultative committee  

We are a diverse group of concerned frontline workers, students, service users and academics. We establish the Progressive Social Work Network（PSWN）in a united attempt to resist the marketization of social services and social work, the stigmatization of service users and the reduction of welfare.

We are aware that social work is vulnerable to being hijacked and used by the government as a tool to control grassroots citizens. We strongly believe that the ultimate goal of social work is the care for humanity and the realization of moral practice. Social work does not only help people tackle challenges in daily life, but also strives to eliminate the roots of inequality and oppression in modern society. Progressive social work must probe deeper to address the structural problems that are the structural cause of human suffering.

We believe that the majority of those who are committed to social services did not hope to assist the powers that be in social control. Instead, they aspire to walk with the grassroots of the society in pushing for real change for human and societal welfare. Yet the dominance of neoliberalism and managerialism has clearly undermined our ability to realize the core values of social work. Therefore we protest: ‘I didn’t come into social work for this!’ The difficult situation that we face today has prompted us to reflect on the true mission of social work and the role of the social worker.

–   We are social workers who serve for the grassroots, and not tools that assist those in positions of wealth and power strengthen an unjust system and execute their flawed policies
–   We insist upon the moral practice of social work; that is, to care for the needs of service recipients as well as promote collective approaches in challenging unjust social policies and practices.

In order to adhere to the principles above, we must launch a campaign for progressive social work and social welfare, and insist upon protecting the spirit of social work that is to promote human rights, justice, democracy and equality. We must resist any oppression against social welfare and its service users in order to establish a society that respects human rights and secures social justice. As such, we propose ‘5Rs’ as our action plan:

1.    Reaffirm: The core values of social service and social work should be defending the rights of the grassroots, securing social justice and promoting social change and the betterment of human welfare.
2.    Reorganize: It is crucial to consolidate the collective power of social welfare stakeholders so as to exert enough influence on authorities in the social welfare sector. We must promote democratization in the management of social welfare agencies, develop a trade union and demand for the right to collective bargaining. We must also reorganize the power of service users’ participlation.
3.    Recapture: We must recapture our say in social welfare planning in order to promote a just allocation of public spending, and to adopt regulations that prevent welfare sponsors from intervening in the autonomy of social services.  
4.    Reappear: Social workers should take up the roles of advocates, making critique and pushing for reform so as to promote social justice, human rights, democracy and equality.
5.    Reestablish: To create a civil society that respects diversity so as to foster real social inclusion.

About Progressive Social Work Network（PSWN）:

If you believe that the goal of social work is to uphold justice and moral practice;
If you hope to strive towards higher goals in social work;
If you are willing to explore the higher possibilities in between theory and practice;
If you are unwilling to play the role of the submissive worker;
Let us work together to pave a truly progressive path in social work!

Report from Personalisation in Glasgow – 10th March

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Those who attended heard about how Glasgow City Council has rushed ahead with the implementation of the national policy of Personalisation (also known as Self Directed Support) primarily as a way to save money. The council claims that 20% of current funding can either be “redirected” to other support services or used to help meet the Social Work Department’s annual cuts targets – in 2012/13 they intend to use Personalisation to cut £10M from the city’s social work budget.

No one at the conference disagreed with the principles underpinning Personalisation – who is against choice, services tailored to individual needs and empowerment? However, the way in which Glasgow City Council has chosen to implement Personalisation is leading to cuts in support, less choice, poorer quality services and attacks on support workers’ wages and conditions. A market driven approach to social care will only lead to a “race to the bottom” and damage the current support services in the city.

The conference agreed a campaign statement which includes calling on the council to adopt a no cuts approach, for a more transparent and inclusive individual assessment process, more resources for advocacy services and the protection of workers’ wages and conditions. We now need to step up the fight to defend services for disabled people, and to make the principle of choice a reality rather than a mask for cuts.

The next meeting of the campaign’s Personalisation network, which is open to all groups, is on Tuesday 27 March at 10am in the UNISON Branch Office, 84 Bell Street.

Brian Smith, UNISON Glasgow City

Final timetable – SWAN Conf 2012

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Besides the key note speakers including Professor Danny Dorling, there are plenary sessions on ‘What Happened to Anti-Racist Social Work?’, ‘Social Work and the Struggle for Social Justice in an International Context’ (with speakers from Hungary, Slovenia and Ireland) and ‘Building Alliances, Defending Welfare’.

In addition there are numerous radical workshops, including themed plenary workshops: The Crisis in Children and Families Social Work; Adult Social Care – The Crisis of Marketization; a session organised by ‘In Defence of Youth work’; a Debate on Age Assessments of Asylum Seeking Childre; ‘Dale Farm’, Traveller Communities and Social Work (organised by Liverpool Irish Centre) and The Crisis in Mental Health.

Delivering Dignity report – a critical response

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Dr Joe Greener, Post Doctoral Teaching Fellow In Social Work at Liverpool Hope University, has considered the report from a critical perspective and finds that it overlooks the issue of the funding necessary to enable staff to provide quality and dignified care.

Joe further suggests that the analysis and recommendations of the document have not considered how social, economic and political conditions impact upon the relationships between care workers and those who receive care. Please read Joe’s short article here.

Personalisation: the facts

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UNISON Scotland, the Social Work Action Network and Defend Glasgow Services Campaign are holding a day conference on from 10.30am on Saturday 10th March 2012 which will provide an opportunity for service users, workers, carers, families and those interested in the issues around personalisation to come together. The conference is free and takes place at the UNISON offices at 84 Bell Street Glasgow.

The day will be made up of a variety or inputs and workshops covering the latest developments and providing an opportunity to discuss our aims for campaigning to make personalisation work in Glasgow and the whole of Scotland.

The conference will be of interest to all involved in personalisation and self directed support issues in Scotland.
To be kept in touch with details of the conference please contact Mandy McDowall on m.mcdowall@unison.co.uk or (0141) 342 2841.

Stop Tesco’s attack on the unemployed

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This is a key rotten plank of the Coalition Government’s vicious social policy which will mean that unemployed people, who are disproportionately comprised of people with disabilities, learning difficulties, mental health and substance misuse issues, will be made to work for nothing.  

Under the Work Programme, unemployed people are required to enter ‘work placements’ not for the minimum wage, but only for their Job Seeker’s Allowance. If people refuse, they will have their benefits removed. Often the jobs people are forced into involve dull, repetitive work, have the least sociable shifts and are in non-unionised workplaces. This undermines wages, reduces the number of paid jobs, erodes working rights and conditions and does not make economic sense.

SWAN notes that as many users of social care services are kicked of Employment and Support Allowance by Atos’ discredited Work Capability Assessments, they will then face this prospect of unpaid work as they are moved onto Job Seeker’s Allowance. Or destitution once their benefits are stopped This may be the fate in store for many people who are genuinely not able to work.

Over the past four months some 1,400 people have worked for Tesco without pay. Only 300 got a job with the company. Tesco made £4 billion in profits last year, whose CEO gets almost £7 million a year in pay.

Sam James, Joint National Chair of the Right to Work Coalition, commented to SWAN, ‘this is a protest against the scandal of Tesco filling jobs with people who are paid nothing but their Job Seeker’s Allowance, working alongside salaried staff doing the same work. Recently, Tesco put an up advert in a East Anglia, with pay listed as “JSA + expenses” – this was advertised as permanent, rather than part of a six-week placement scheme. This is free labour for Tesco – courtesy of the government. Already TK Maxx, Sainsbury and Marie Curie nurses have pulled out of the scheme. Now we want to ramp up the pressure on Tesco to do the same.’

SWAN opposes the broader ‘Workfare’ policy as stigmatizing and blaming of unemployed people for their own woes, following an economic crisis caused by the financial services industry.

SWAN believes in decent jobs, pay, terms and conditions for all. Social care service users, carers and workers are part of the 99%!

School Uniform Grant Campaign

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SWAN activists in Liverpool are campaigning alongside Liverpool Against the Cuts (LATC) to reverse the council’s recent decision to scrap school uniform grants for 24,000 of the poorest children and young people across the region. Cutting the grants will mean parents on very low incomes no longer receive £20 per year towards the cost of a primary school uniform and £40 for secondary school uniforms. SWAN Liverpool and LATC believe the cuts to school uniform grants are both unnecessary and unfair. The cuts to school uniform grants comes as another direct attack by Liverpool City Council on poor working class families.

If you wish to get involved in the campaign, please send an email to:

liverpoolagainstthecuts@gmail.com

Statement on closure of the Southampton social Work course

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It is against this backdrop that we are perplexed and dismayed  by the decision of Southampton University to close their Professional Social Work Degree course. Southampton has always been a pioneer in social work education and is widely regarded as one of the most well respected centres of excellent  for social work education in the UK and beyond.

We understand that a major reason for Southampton University in taking this decision is to concentrate on those courses and programmes that are deemed to be most effective in producing ‘high quality’ research. Whilst we are all in favour of  research informed teaching, we feel the real reasons are more to do with economic reasons rather than research excellence alone.

We say such a strategy is both morally unfair and myopic in a business sense. Social work as an academic discipline in the UK has made enormous strides over the past two decades in building up a research base and it is now widely regarded by social work academics and professionals from other countries. This can be evidenced in the high concentration of high quality social work related academic journals and the disproportionately high number of social work books published in the UK. In a situation like this, it makes no sense to cut back education and research just as they are in the process of being taken much more seriously and considered alongside the more established vocational disciplines of medicine and law.

We are additionally concerned that, rather than being an isolated development, this closure is a sign of the times we living in as a result of Coalition Government’s plan to marketise Higher Education.  The proposal which has caused the most immediate anger and led to extensive demonstrations in the last two years has been the policy of raising university fees from around £3,000 up to £9,000.  However what people are  less aware of is the central proposal in the recent Education White Paper which links the offering of courses by universities with the capacity of students to readily pay back the debts they will accrue as a result of the huge hike in fees.  This is a proposal that effectively makes the earning capacity of graduates the key criteria for educational provision about, rather than the social usefulness of that training programme.  We are concerned that this will have a disproportionate impact on courses  like Social Work, Youth Work, Community studies courses (which prepare people for work in third sector organisations), much of which is undertaken not to earn high wages, but because of a moral commitment to assist those who are vulnerable and in need of assistance.

The Social Work Action Network (SWAN) is gravely concerned that the marketisation of Higher Education will lead to a cut back in Social Work and Social Welfare education, at a time when these programmes are needed more than ever.

Stephen Cowden and Gurnam Singh on behalf of the SWAN Steering Committee.

Support Barnet social workers striking against privatisation

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The workers are striking to maintain the integrity and quality of their vital service on 9th February 2012 – they need our backing. Please send your message to:

john.burgess@barnetunison.org.uk

Let’s fortify the workers with messages of goodwill in their fight against privatisation.
This is a live, frontline example of what is happening in social care, as cuts are made and the welfare state is further denuded. SWAN London has invited the Barnet social workers to speak at our event.

A flyer for Saturday’s SWAN seminar is attached – please do come along and strengthen the resistance!

SWAN London

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Dear Swan,

Our colleagues in the team running the duty service for Adults Social Services have voted overwhelmingly to take strike action in order to remain a council employee for London Borough of Barnet. The Council is trying to put them in a Call Centre which they are already trying to privatise. Our colleagues have not taken this decision easily and so need to hear that you support them. Please send a message of support to this email address.
The proposed day of action is 9th February when these colleagues will join the 2 bigger groups of colleagues involved in industrial action already trying to prevent being moved from Barnet.
See you Saturday.

Thanks,

Barnet UNISON